Due to the vast and increasing amount of traffic generated by consumers on the Internet, businesses continue to seek more effective means to advertise their goods and services online. In recent years, the online advertising environment has evolved to include five primary participants: “advertisers,” “publishers,” “ad networks,” “audience intelligence providers,” and “ad exchanges.”
An “advertiser” is generally a merchant of goods services willing to pay to have its ads presented to consumers online. A “publisher” generally refers to the owner and operator of one or more content websites having available advertising space (e.g., “banners”) for “lease” by advertisers. An “ad network” maintains an inventory of ads (e.g., on one or more servers) associated with various advertisers, and delivers the ads to publishers' websites in response to a trigger, such as a request from a publisher. An “ad exchange” essentially acts as an ad broker, matching the publishers' available advertising space with particular ads based on a variety of criteria, such as consumer information, bidding information, budget information, ad campaign information, or other criteria. An “audience intelligence provider,” or “data provider,” generally refers to a party that gathers information about consumers, such as demographic information, preferences, interests, etc., for use by the ad exchanges and/or ad networks in the process of selecting and serving a particular ad to a particular consumer. For example, websites affiliated with the ad networks and/or ad exchanges may gather information about consumers as they interact with the websites, and provide the gathered information (e.g., in the form of browser cookies) to the ad networks and/or ad exchanges for use in the ad selection process. In addition, data providers may even gather information about consumers in offline environments, such from paper transactions (e.g., mortgage application), and provide the consumer information to ad networks for use in online advertising.
Generally speaking, advertisers are willing to pay for three types consumer interactions with an ad: an “impression,” “click,” and “conversion.” An “impression” refers to an instance of an ad being selected and served to a consumer on the website of a publisher. A “click” refers to an instance of a consumer actually clicking on or otherwise selecting an advertisement. A “conversion” refers to an instance of the consumer following through on the ad, such as by making a purchase, enrolling in a program, providing certain information, etc. Advertisers are generally willing to pay more per conversion than per click, and more per click than per impression.
In an effort to spend their online advertising budgets on those consumers who will most likely be interested in their ads, advertisers develop “ad campaigns” or marketing plans that identify certain types of consumers as targets for given products or services. In other cases, advertisers may be unsure of what types of consumers are most likely to respond to a given product and/or ad, and may wish to gather specific information about the consumers viewing various types of websites and responding to their ads. The advertisers may then develop a targeted ad campaign or marketing strategy (e.g., for a particular, good service, and/or ad) based on the gathered information. For example, an ad campaign relating to a new video game may target males ages 13-21 browsing certain game-related websites during a period surrounding the release of the game. The ad campaign may further specify budgeting information, such as prices the advertiser is willing to pay per impression, click, and conversion.
When a user visits the webpage of a publisher, the instance of the publisher webpage executing in the user's browser generates a request (e.g., an HTML request) for ads to fill any available ad space on the page. Based on information contained in the request, such pricing information, ad type information, a unique identifier associated with the user, etc., and on ad campaign information, the ad networks and/or ad exchanges facilitate “bids” on the available ad space. If the bid of a particular advertiser is accepted, the ad network and/or ad exchange select and serve a targeted ad associated with the winning advertiser for display on the user's browser.
Implementing targeted ad campaigns requires the audience intelligence providers to gather and process information about consumers, which is known as “profiling.” One way intelligence providers gather consumer information is by tracking consumers as they surf the Internet using “cookies.” Generally, a cookie is a small piece of data placed on the user's browser when the user visits a website belonging to ad network. The cookie usually contains, among other things, a unique identifier associated with the user. Depending on the practices of the ad network the cookie may contain other information, such as date and time information, an estimated zip code of the user, and browser history information. The cookie is stored for a specified time and returned whenever the user subsequently visits that website or another website in the ad network. By compiling and analyzing cookie information associated with a particular user gathered across multiple websites, a “user profile” indicating various attributes, preferences, and/or interests of the consumer can be built. This profile may then be used by ad networks and/or ad exchanges to support targeted ad campaigns. Of course, other consumer tracking methods may be used by intelligence providers to gather information about consumers and build user profiles.
Some people find such consumer tracking and profiling methods employed by online advertisers to be intrusive or invasive. These privacy concerns have encouraged online advertising companies to form self-regulating cooperatives to ensure that consumer privacy is protected in the advertising process. One such cooperative is Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), which provides various tools for consumers to educate themselves in relation to online advertising and protect their privacy online. For example, NAI's website allows users to access information about how targeted advertising works, the privacy policy of the ad networks participating in the cooperative, and other related information. In addition, NAI's website provides a tool allowing the user to selectively “opt-out” of targeted advertising by one or more of the participating networks.
Generally, opting-out is a process by which a user may avoid receiving further targeted advertising from one or more ad networks. Usually this involves replacing the unique identifier in the cookie associated with the ad network on the user's browser with some type of opt-out identifier, creating an opt-out cookie. When the user subsequently visits a website in the ad network, the opt-out cookie is returned, and the website can no longer track the user's browser history, build or update user profiles, etc. Moreover, to the extent that an ad is requested and delivered to the user, the ad is generic and not selected based on any particular information about the user.
NAI has also begun working on initiatives to provide greater transparency and control to consumers in relation to online advertising. One such proposal is known as the “CLEAR Ad Notice Guidelines” (“Guidelines”), which requires enabling a consumer to view detailed information about an ad served on a web page. Specifically, the Guidelines require ad networks and other online advertising entities to provide certain metadata in or with ad-related requests and responses (e.g., HTML requests and responses). The metadata includes information about the origin and nature of the ad, including the legal business name of the advertiser (e.g., Ford™), a link to the advertiser's homepage (e.g., www.ford.com), the legal business name of the ad network delivering the ad (e.g., Yahoo™), a link to the privacy page and/or advertising practices page of the ad network (e.g., www.yahoo.com/privacy), the legal business name of ad exchange or other party providing the matching or targeting services for the ad (e.g., DoubleClick™), a link to the ad exchange's or other matching party's privacy policy or opt-out page (e.g., www.doubleclick.com/privacy), and an indication of whether targeted advertising was used in the serving of the ad (e.g., Yes or No). The Guidelines also provide for displaying an “Ad Marker” icon on or near the ad, the selection of which causes the user's browser to display a graphical “Interstitial Overlay” associated with the ad, which is essentially a graphical representation of the ad metadata information described above.